Skepticism

EVENTS

Losing the will to live

World, you aren’t helping. It’s been a long, long day, I thought I’d just browse the news on my brief break, and I run across this.

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) on Monday said that it was a “scary thought” that elites could be culling the population with vaccines to preserve the Earth’s resources.

The Texas Republican spent part of his five-week break from Congress this week by interviewing conservative activist Alan Keyes while filling in as a guest host for Tony Perkins on Family Research Council’s Washington Watch.

Gohmert + Keyes and the Patriarchy Research Council, all in one story. Why didn’t the earth open up in revulsion beneath them and launch them towards Mars in an explosive eruption of lava?

By the way, what prompted that accusation against the liberal elites was that some Texas megachurch was responsible for a measles epidemic because they discouraged their followers from vaccinating their kids. If Gohmert blamed ignorance for a disease, he’d have to take the fall as the Typhoid Mary of stupidity.

Yes, it’s a “scary thought.” It’s also a “scary thought” to think that zombies rule Belgium. It’s a scary thought to think that the coffee I just drank had a mind-control drug put in it, and that soon all the customers of Philz Coffee will be the mindless footsoldiers of the Russian army. That doesn’t freaking well make it true, or even remotely plausible.

Louie ‘G is truly a national treasure. Sure Texas has brought us a lot of stupid congresscritters, and several insane Reps, but Louie brings all those mental defects together in one high profile jackass, and squares the result. If he hadn’t been elected we surly would have had to make him up.

Every time there is a story about Texas there are Texans coming out of the woodwork saying “We aren’t all like that!!1!” Well, guess what. I’m not giving you guys any credit until you stop electing these idiots to Congress. You guys have unleashed on us Gohmert, Ted Cruz, Joe Barton, and Lamar Smith while inflicting Rick Perry on yourself. If you want to regain respect for your state then get rid of these wingnuts.

By the way, what prompted that accusation against the liberal elites was that some Texas megachurch was responsible for a measles epidemic because they discouraged their followers from vaccinating their kids. If Gohmert blamed ignorance for a disease, he’d have to take the fall as the Typhoid Mary of stupidity.

(Blinks…)

Ah, but, umm… see…

We totes did do this. It was, in fact, a deft and amazing piece of reverse psychology. We kept telling them ‘vaccinate, you idiots!’, and they figured ‘they’re telling us that because they want us dead, so we’d better not’, and then they didn’t, and boom!

So yep. It was us!

So… Umm… Brilliantly played, fellow Illuminati! Brilliantly played!…

Well, mostly. A bit of a mess the epidemic going way beyond the single Republican senator actually targeted, and even into vulnerable people who were supposed to be protected by herd immunity, actually, but, umm, anyway… Well done. I guess.

(Somewhat confused, hesitant sinister laugh goes here…)

Oh, and yeah, about that target, I’m afraid, yes, that it’s totes true, too, about the secret eugenics program..

Yes, yes, I hear what you’re saying. Guy, none of this is even heritable, so what’s the hell’s the point?

You underestimate the Illuminati’s wisdom, fool! Sure, it’s true it’s not heritable. But did you realize just taking out Gohmert alone would increase the average IQ of Texas by 50%? Immediately?

So yeah. I think it’s clear enough. We know what we’re doing, here. Or, at least we’re getting it together at lot better than that fiasco of a floridation conspiracy…

Every time there is a story about Texas there are Texans coming out of the woodwork saying “We aren’t all like that!!1!” Well, guess what. I’m not giving you guys any credit until you stop electing these idiots to Congress. You guys have unleashed on us Gohmert, Ted Cruz, Joe Barton, and Lamar Smith while inflicting Rick Perry on yourself. If you want to regain respect for your state then get rid of these wingnuts.

Gerrymandering explains some of the problem, but they have to have a majority of democracy-hating, right-wing, dishonest hacks in their state legislature in order to put gerrymandering into effect in the first place. It does not explain Rick Perry either.

In another thread elsewhere I fumed about Gerrymandering as the cause of the problem under discussion until someone politely pointed out that we were talking about the U.S. Senate. Oops. No insult, harm or snideness intended by this post.

On the bright side maybe they’re ignorant enough that they will never find out about the fake vaccination campaign in Pakistan that was part of the operation to find Bin Laden then mistake it for a real one. [/snark]

The thing that bothers me (but does not surprise) is that there enough dumbass Texans to collect into one congressional district to elect this asshole. Unfortunately, after you’ve created Gohmert’s district, you have an apparently infinite supply of dumbasses to pour into other districts.

Next time Texas wants to secede, please hold the plebiscite immediately in a place where I can vote! –pH

they have to have a majority of democracy-hating, right-wing, dishonest hacks in their state legislature in order to put gerrymandering into effect in the first place.

Not at all. Even without Voter ID laws, shortening early voting periods, decreasing the number of polling places or voting hours in the “wrong” neighborhoods, spreading misinformation about polling places, days, and hours, and other items in a long laundry-list of voter suppression tactics, the percentage of registered voters who actually get out and vote (sadly) skews old, white, and conservative. You need a bare majority or something close to it.

Over here in Australia, people are desperate over the perspective of an incoming PM Abbott, and are considering to have themselves put to sleep for the next 3 years. I reckon it’s a reasonable proposition.

I believe I saw that Gohmert/Keyes interview on RWWBlog and Keyes was the source of the very same “scary thought”.

And the crazy goes deeper than the measles epidemic. What spurred Keyes’ crazy involved the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation’s search for malaria vaccines and other much needed science-based public health efforts in Africa have garnered a lot of publicity. What’s maybe less well-known is that Melinda Gates, who is Catholic, has come out to say that the need most often expressed by the African women she’s talked to is for inexpensive and effective birth control and that she feels strongly that the foundation should respect those choices and lend help that direction too.

Alan Keyes is a Catholic. He and many other more prominent Catholics have come unglued over the BC deal. And in Keyes fevered mind, these well-intended efforts are fused into a soopersekrit, dasterdly plot to reduce the world’s population from 6 billion to approx 250 million and (to paraphrase the doom and gloom coda Keyes put to this tall tale) “I don’t know of any innocent means they can fulfill this goal to getting rid of 5,750 million people-do you??!”

And like a good little liar, Gohmert tries trafficking this “scary thought” to the mainstream. It’s a no-lose for him, he won’t lose trial ballooning pew spew to see if’n it might just stick and rally more votes at the election booth. Gohmert is risk-free market research for testing what kind of crazy works manipulating voters.

Here in NZ a serious outbreak of whooping cough can be traced directly to a single family that refused to vaccinate their children, then took them on holliday to Thailand and brought whooping cough back with them.

I really do think there should be both civil and criminal penalties for endangering the lives of others by refusing to vaccinate.

Robertson’s charity “Operation Blessing” is also used for propaganda in the we-do-almost-nothing-but-claim-to-have-saved-the-day category.

I think he should sue. The documentary will benefit from the publicity, and a court battle will just expose even more details regarding Robertson’s scams.

An Operation Blessing spokesman told The Virginian-Pilot that they are “considering legal action” against Lara Zizic and David Turner, whose film “Mission Congo” will hold its premier at the Toronto International Film Festival, over the film’s supposed “false and defamatory” content.

CBN has a history of going after Robertson’s critics; for example, they recently embarked on an unsuccessful push to cover up a video of Robertson — first posted here on Right Wing Watch —arguing that gay men wear special rings that they use to infect random people they meet with HIV/AIDS.

… Robertson diverted charitable activities to help mining projects that he owned and grossly exaggerated the work of Operation Blessing among Rwandan refugees. …

… an official investigation into Robertson’s operation in Virginia accused him of “fraudulent and deceptive” claims when he was running an almost non-existent aid operation.

… Operation Blessing … pulls in hundreds of millions of dollars a year in donations, much of it through Robertson’s televangelism. They include characterising a failed large-scale farming project as a huge success, and claims about providing schools and other infrastructure.

But some of the most damaging criticism of Robertson comes from former aid workers at Operation Blessing, who describe how mercy flights to save refugees were diverted hundreds of miles from the crisis to deliver equipment to a diamond mining concession run by the televangelist.

… The pilot said he joined Operation Blessing to help people. Of the 40 flights he flew into Congo, just two delivered aid. The others were associated with the diamond mining. “We’re not doing anything for those people,” he said. “After several months I was embarrassed to have Operation Blessing on the airplane’s tail.” He had the lettering removed. …

One of the stranger sights of the refugee crisis that followed the 1994 Rwandan genocide was of stretcher-bearers rushing the dying to medical tents, with men running alongside reciting Bible verses to the withering patients.

The bulk of the thousands of doctors and nurses struggling to save lives – as about 40,000 people died of cholera – were volunteers for the international medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). The Bible readers were hired by the American televangelist and former religious right presidential candidate, Pat Robertson, and his aid organisation, Operation Blessing International.

But on Robertson’s US television station, the Christian Broadcasting Network, that reality was reversed, as he raised millions of dollars from loyal followers by claiming Operation Blessing was at the forefront of the international response to the biggest refugee crisis of the decade. It’s a claim he continues to make, even though an official investigation … accused him of “fraudulent and deceptive” claims when he was running an almost non-existent aid operation.

“We brought the largest contingent of medicine into Goma in Zaire, at least the first and the largest,” Robertson said as recently as last year on his TV station.

Now a new documentary lays bare the extent of the misrepresentations of Operation Blessing’s activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire, that it says continue to this day. …

So, bible-quoting missionaries who are hampering the work of doctors and nurses equals, in Robertson’s mind, “medicine”?